


Chaotic

by IuvenesCor



Category: Bastille (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Chaos Planet, Gen, Post-Apocalypse, WWCOMMS (Bastille), rated for guns and swears
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-09
Updated: 2020-01-09
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:34:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22185679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IuvenesCor/pseuds/IuvenesCor
Summary: Because every post-apocalyptic dystopia needs its group of morally grey and misfit heroes. Obviously.
Kudos: 11





	Chaotic

**Author's Note:**

> Eyyyy so I've been trying to do a wwcomms au for FOREVER and after a million misfires, here I am?
> 
> (p.s. I suppose I should apologize for any inconsistencies in my prose. I'm used to American English, but for the sake of the bandom I've been attempting to write with British English as best as I know how. So if spellings/terms are a bit strange, blame that on a culture clash lol.)

“Sir. There’s something you need to see.”

The hair-and-makeup chair is hardly a throne, but it makes Grey feel like royalty on the best of days, and especially on the worst of days. He enjoys being pampered. He enjoys chatting up the stylist. And he hates being disturbed during his routines.

At first, he doesn’t even bother looking at the production assistant standing beside him. He’s too busy studying the stylist as she brushes cosmetics onto his face. A spokesman can’t afford to look anything but perfect on screen (he can’t, anyway) — especially not for WWCOMMS. No wrinkles or flaws or shortcomings can be seen. And as a reward for his patience, they certainly hired a pretty little thing to do the job.

“We’re nearly done here,” he replies. “It can wait.”

“I… I’m afraid it can’t,” the young man says, clearly caught off guard. He must be new. His eyes still have a bit of life in them, and he doesn’t show the reverence to Grey that he deserves. “It’s news on Chaos Planet. They want you to reference it in today’s speech.”

Grey rolls his eyes, and the stylist scolds him for moving too much. Of course it’s Chaos Planet. Day in, day out, from when he wakes up to when he goes to sleep— even in his dreams— there’s always something to be said about Chaos Planet. It’s mostly curses and condemnations, as there isn’t a name he hates more in all the world than _Chaos_ bloody _Planet._

“For God’s sake,” he mutters flatly. “What now?”

“They were out on the streets today— the leaders. They’ve put out new propaganda.”

“Did we capture them?” That’s the only piece of information he so desperately wants to hear. “Are any of them dead?”

“A couple dead, just low ranking members of the mob, they think. One captured— that’s how we got the video of the incident.”

Gritting his teeth, Grey lifts a hand to wave away the stylist. “Give us a moment, dear; we’ll come back to this.” He finally places his eyes on the PA, sizing up his small frame and hesitant disposition. “I suppose I’m expected to watch this video, hm?”

In response, the young man offers up the tablet in his hands after tapping the screen. Tinny sounds come pouring out of the device as Grey accepts it into his own hands and watches a crude recording of a poster being nailed onto a broken telephone pole.

\- 

Dan was never the type to take credit for much, good or bad… especially the good. He preferred chalking up his exploits to a team effort, or simply to incredibly undeserved good luck.

But as he watched the posters go up one by one in overlooked street corners and abandoned shop windows, he felt his fair share of pride. Maybe he wasn’t responsible for starting Chaos Planet, but he was responsible for helping keep the movement alive. The public seemed to take well to his songs and speeches— those who weren’t duped by WWCOMMS rhetoric or threatened by Bad Steel strong-arming, anyway. And even if he didn’t like to praise himself at length for any efforts he made, he still felt his words might be worthy of some respect.

He stared at the words, copied from his own handwriting, on the roughly made adverts. _Won’t you help me start a fire?_ That was the slogan of the week— inspired by his less savoury sides, sure, but still an effective call to action buried in the body of a song. The fires didn’t have to be literal ones. The tyranny in this godforsaken place could be challenged if only half the people questioned what good WWCOMMS or Bad Steel could possibly be doing them. WWCOMMS had gone from reporting news to writing their own truths; and what WWCOMMS wanted, Bad Steel enforced like a little private military. Two bedfellows filling the void of an obliterated monarchy in an apocalyptic hellhole. But the fires of free thinking had been snuffed out in the confusion of societal collapse, and too many people accepted total rule in favour of three meals every day and a roof over their heads. All Dan wanted to do was get the public’s brains thinking in a blaze.

_What I wouldn’t do to see WWCOMMS leveled to the fuckin’ ground…_

He shook his head, ignoring the inner voice calling for less metaphorical fires. Now was not the time.

As he turned from the stump of a telephone pole before him and its new Chaos Planet-branded decoration, looking over his shoulder in case of any prying eyes down the otherwise quiet street (no one was supposed to be here; it was branded off limits for some reason, but people used it for shortcuts through the city all the time), his breath caught in his throat as something collided with him from behind.

“Oh fuck!”

He spun around to find a calm but concerned Tom stepping back to give him space, adjusting the lens of his camera. Relived, Dan made efforts to ignore the panicked words clamouring in his head and eventually let out a sigh. 

“Sorry, mate,” he said, laughing nervously. “I had no idea you were that close.”

Tom smiled. “It’s all good. If I dropped this, now, that would’ve been a different story.” Everybody knew that Tom’s camera was his pride and joy; filming during operations like this kept him sane. “You okay?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.” He gestured to the poster. “Look good?”

“Couldn’t have done it better myself.”

“Nice. Let’s go and—”

“Guys!”

-

The footage is still blurry, unfocused from the impact of Chaos Planet’s leader stumbling into the cameraman, as it pans over to a tall figure darting into view from a nearby alleyway. The rainbow-coloured streak pants urgently, _“We gotta move. Somethin’ tipped off Bad Steel.”_

Smith asks, _“How close?”_

_“Too close,”_ the figure replies. That voice is familiar enough from many acquired recordings over the years for Grey to pin the man as Simmons just before the camera refocuses. They really did let out the big shots today. _“Woody and Will saw them by the plaza. They radioed me just before they got spotted.”_

 _Spotted_ wasn’t good enough. If it had been, this footage would have been delivered on a happier note. “Idiots,” Grey mutters, and he isn’t sure if he means that more to Chaos Planet or to the brainless Bad Steel brutes. Probably both, equally. But despite his knowledge of a less than stellar finale to this story, he can’t help but want to see it play out. 

-

“Shit,” Dan mumbled, hands running over his shaved scalp. “And you’re sure they’re coming this way?”

No, Kyle wasn’t sure. In fact, all he got out of the other lads was, in summary, “hey, we think we’ve got a tail and oh-shit-run-abort.” The plaza was a good thirty streets away, and a massive blockade of rubble split this half of the borough from their half. Bad Steel had proper transportation, which meant their mobility on the road was great, but they lacked a little in the climbing-over-collapsed-multi-storey-buildings department. Still, they didn’t have to just be in the plaza. If they were active in that part of London, that didn’t stop them from heading next door just for a casual glance about.

“Dunno,” he replied, still catching his breath. “But I don’t like it. I think we should call it for today.”

Dan and Tom shared a look, both seeming a little put out. (Who could blame them? Running for one’s life kind of sucked arse.) “We’ve only got two more posters left,” Tom said, still fiddling with his camera. “When are the streets ever this empty around here?”

“I’d really like to finish, too,” Dan chimed in, his eyes pleading as if Kyle had literally _any_ control over this situation.

Deeming it best not to argue, Kyle shrugged. Arguing would only take up precious time that could be used to wrap up. “Whatever, it’s your funerals. I’m gonna head back to HQ… hopefully I’ll be there by the time the others show up.” _IF the others show,_ paranoia squawked back at him. But Woody and Will were two of the most badass badasses he had ever met. They’d be fine.

As for Dan and Tom, though... saying he wasn’t worried would be a lie no one could believe. Dan especially worried him. Sure, the man could run; he’d trained long and hard because he realized it would be real easy to get dead at the rate he used to run. But Dan also fell victim to bad decisions sometimes (a lot of times), decisions that weren’t always his fault.

That in mind, Kyle carefully pried the pistol from his waistband and held it out to his friend. “Here, ‘case you need it.”

Dan’s expression soured. “No.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t— I don’t want to…” Dan’s words hesitated under Kyle’s commanding stare. “I just— _fine_.”

The weapon exchanged hands, Dan carefully receiving it like it was a sleeping cobra. He closed his eyes as he tucked it in the back of his trousers, and sighed. “But you be careful, right?”

Kyle grinned. “Don’t worry ‘bout me.” Taking up the corner of his shirt, he used the fabric to wipe off a few lines of face paint from his cheek. “I’m getting a head start, unlike some people. What could possibly go—”

His foolish question was answered before he could finish it, punctuated by a gun shot in the distance and the pounding of shoes down the road.

\- 

The footage jars violently in reaction to the crack of a bullet somewhere in the background. Grey snorts at the panicked swearing of the men both in and out of the camera’s scope; it blends in perfectly with some distant profanities from an approaching voice, unseen by reason of the video taking a moment to capture highly detailed and even more highly uninspired images of the tarmac.

 _“The fucking hell are you all still doing standin’ about?”_ yells the newcomer. _“Run!”_

Judging by the jostling of the camera and the glimpses of shoes cutting in and out of frame, _run_ is exactly what they do.

Grey shifts in his seat.

“Oh, this is the fun part.”

-

Woody’s shout had rather caught Will off guard; but as he rounded the street corner, half ready to chuck the aerosol of paint he was holding as a defencive measure, he understood the outburst a little better. What his friend had seen just seconds before was a very good, and very bad, sight.

Good, because if there were anyone Will wanted to see while running for his life, it was a cluster of tie-dyed allies. Bad, because Bad Steel was hot on their heels.

Kyle’s face, lit up with happy recognition, hadn’t caught up to the frustration in his voice as his group quickly broke into a sprint. “The hell!” he called back over his shoulder. “Why the hell would you lead them this way?!”

“We weren’t going to lead them straight to HQ,” Will shot back, in lieu of any snappy retort from Woody. (The man deserved to catch his breath, as much as could be done while running, and heaven knows bickering with Kyle could knock the wind out of anyone.) “And we thought the barricade would give us some distance!”

“Well clearly not!” 

The others and Woody with their head starts dashed from the main thoroughfare to a side road, and Will followed, taking a quick glance at the stretch of tarmac behind them. A few dark figures were just turning a corner as well, two managing to get shots off before Will disappeared from their view.

“They’re gaining!” he reported, to no response. He would be offended, if it weren’t for the fact that ideally the less noise they made, the better. Instead, he put all his effort into pushing ahead, considering the sights and sounds passing by. This part of town was closer to the centre of WWCOMMS’ designated travel and business districts; civilian faces tried to hide their curiosity at a technicolour mob appearing from the alleys. The average citizen didn’t want to get involved in a skirmish, so the few here that lined the road quickly moved away from the rebels barreling their way.

There was something… cinematic about running through these streets. Not that Will liked living in a bombed-out, totalitarian nightmare, but he couldn’t hate all of it. He was an artist, after all. There was something to be said about the aesthetics of decay and danger.

The next time anyone spoke a word and broke him from his musings, it was Woody, who after several more twists and turns from alleys to main roads and back again, ordered, “Split!”

Kyle and Dan immediately took a sharp right; Tom took a curving left, with Woody following suit. Will considered trailing behind the latter, but his mental map gave him a rough idea of where they stood (or ran) presently. There was a particular wall in a particular alley a few streets straight ahead that was just asking for a nice little tagging, courtesy of Chaos Planet. (Those Bad Steel bastards kept painting over his graffiti masterpieces, and that just wouldn’t do.) The others would get along fine.

-

After a minute or more of the camera doing nothing but swinging back and forth with the pace of running, Grey feels like taking back everything he just said. This isn’t fun; this is nauseating. He’d rather have the condensed version that the public’s going to get in the news report this evening; the version where the chase is only a few seconds long before Bad Steel swoops in and makes their arrests. If he’s got to watch anymore of this nonsense, at least let it be interesting! But all he’s getting out of this is frustration and a sense of vertigo.

“Please tell me it gets better,” he drones to the PA. The young man shrugs, unsure what scripted reply he’s meant to give.

“Define ‘better’?” he says mildly.

“Someone getting shot in the head would be nice.” Grey pinches the bridge of his nose and winces. “Preferably, me.”

\- 

Every bit of instinct in Woody’s veins told him to keep running. If Bad Steel was following from behind, it was only a matter of time before reinforcements came at other angles. Splitting up helped to keep them preoccupied and hopefully confused, but it would only do so much. HQ was the only safe place at this point.

But if he needed a break right now, then Tom clearly needed a break yesterday. The man was slowing down, having lost enough of his head start that Woody was now a good fifteen steps ahead of him. 

“Here,” Woody hissed, waving back to Tom and toward the corner of a building. A long forgotten kiosk of some sort, battered and bleached by time in the sun, rested against the brick, making at least a little bit of shelter from eyes that might pass the alleyway. He crouched beside the kiosk, shortly after joined by his friend.

Woody knew from too much experience that one of the easiest ways to escape a tail was to blend in with the masses. Hoping to make the best of his time, he quickly removed his outer shirt— all neon colours and swirls— leaving a dull, inoffensive grey undershirt on his person. Balling up the outer shirt in his hands, he began wiping the paint off his face (turns out it was a bad day to go wild with the decoration; just his fucking luck.) 

“You okay, mate?” he asked Tom, working away at the paint.

In the corner of his vision, Woody watched him nod. “Yeah, I’m okay. Just… ankle’s a little weird. But don’t worry. You good?”

Woody nodded back. “Gotta be, eh?” With one final wipe across his brow, he tossed the now even more garish wad of cloth on top of the kiosk. He gathered his hair up in both hands and began manoeuvring it into the elastic pulled off his wrist. Another glance at Tom— whose face was twisted in a grimace— made him pause. “You sure you’re all right?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Tom waved him off, trying to manage a smile. _You bloody liar. At least be good at it if you’re going to lie._ But before Woody could call him out, he lifted his camera off the ground and aimed it directly at the other man’s face. “Smile for the camera?”

Sighing, Woody acquiesced with what had to be the third most artificial smile in his catalogue of forced expressions before gently pushing the camera aside. “C’mon. Let’s get you cleaned up ‘fore anybody shows.”

-

Wood’s cheeky grin disappears from the shot as it lowers back to the ground, capturing the edge of the alleyway’s mouth. While a whole lot of nothing for a few moments isn’t worth wasting his time over, Grey is at least glad it’s not another five minutes of running. He hopes he doesn’t have to watch another montage like that again, while quietly dreading that he will.

That isn’t the case, however. 

The only running he sees comes on the end of a few whispered curses and a distant voice calling, _“Oi, you two. What are you doin’?”_ The rebels don’t leave time to answer, the sound of them scrambling to their feet coming as the prelude to the glimpse of two pairs of legs running away from the camera and out of the alley. A few gunshots, more running legs, and fading chaos pass.

A minute.

Another.

The PA reaches over, sliding his finger across the screen. The scene shifts ahead by yet another minute— Grey wishes the young man would have done this in the first place and saved him the headache— before the shot changes to a black-clad Bad Steel officer picking up the camera, seemingly turning it around in a moment of inspection, and documenting a man’s limp form being dragged back into the alley.

The video ends.

“Well,” Grey concludes. “It’s no award-winner, but at least it’s got a happy ending. So we have him, then, the cameraman?”

“Yes, sir.”

“We’ll take it. There’s a lot to learn from someone like that.” He smiles. “A lot to break.”

The PA’s nod looks like a reflex more than a sign of real agreement. “The newsroom says they’ll send up a final cut of the report before you start your speech. The writers are already working on revisions that reflect the developments.”

Grey waves his hand in vague approval. “Very good. Now go bother someone else.” As the PA starts to leave, he quickly adds, “And bring the stylist back, won’t you? She’s got a masterpiece to finish up.”

-

 _“One thing we must always remember: WWCOMMS is here for you, wherever you are. And ‘you’ means everyone; ‘everyone’ means everywhere. These flagrant displays of rebellion can only last for so long. To the people: please continue to show your cooperation with Bad Steel and your local WWCOMMS representatives. Without them, our society would fall apart. We need one another to survive.  
_  
_To Chaos Planet: today, you have lost assets and gained nothing in return. If you continue to spread propaganda in this way, we will only come down on you harder. No matter how brave or clever you think you are, you cannot destroy this society. Your fires will be put out. We will make sure of that.”_  
  
Kyle’s fingernails and rings dig into his skin as his fists clench harder with every taunt and threat. “That fucking cunt. I’d show him.”

The televised speech cuts into the regular evening news segment; unsurprisingly, the events of this morning are used for the headline. Everyone gathered around the ancient television set in the war room— dramatic name for just a tiny rectangle with some chairs, a table, a telly, and half-arsed plans being thrown about every day— has been watching in relative silence. Kyle and Woody and a few others have heckled the Spokesman throughout, but no proper commentary has been worth breaking the solemnity of the moment.

They lost three out on the streets today, permanently. And then, of course… Tom. Tom, whose face is now plastered on the screen, talked about as if he were some sort of trophy that WWCOMMS just won, as if “questioning” is even half of what those bastards plan to do to him. 

Kyle can’t stand to look at the report anymore. His eyes rove the barely lit room, catching only the silhouettes of some of his friends and the full essence of others. Woody’s already off pacing behind the television set, having lost his patience with the broadcast long ago. Will is leaning against the wall, arms crossed and eyes focused on some arbitrary spot on the concrete floor. Dan’s sat near the door, feet propped up on his chair and face buried in his knees, hands covering his scalp. Dick has wandered his way out the room, corresponding over the radio with the night watch posted outside; Erica’s being comforted by a face Kyle can’t make out in the shadows; Coop can’t seem to stop shaking his head…

This is pathetic. It’s not okay. Should have never happened. And all over _a bunch of fucking posters!_

The first and only comfort his mind jumps to is— quite obnoxiously— the stupid song that started this campaign. _Oh, won’t you help me start a fire? Come on, won’t you help me start a fire…_ It doesn’t seem to matter how angry he is at it. It’s still catchy. It’s still relevant. WWCOMMS doesn’t seem to understand that taking one of Chaos Planet’s own is like driving a tanker of petrol into a forest fire. 

No one has to say it out loud. Kyle knows.

Rescue and revenge are burning bright on everyone’s mind tonight.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry for making Tom nothing more than a plot point. He'll be okay, though. Probably.


End file.
